EA To Do More Hiring Than Firing By The End Of The Year

Following up on EA's response and denial of the 500 - 1000 layoffs that were rumored to take place at the company, EA sent out another response to better clarify their position basically making it known that they'll be hiring more people than firing them by the end of this year.

“EA is growing and looking to hire hundreds of people for our digital, console, mobile and social games. Like all game companies, we make occasional adjustments to resize teams as projects are completed and new priorities are established. Overall, we expect that headcount will be up at the end of this year.”

Previously EA had mentioned that they're always bringing people in while others are leaving but that they're mostly about growth.

The interesting part about it all is that we speculated in an earlier article that the layoffs fit the tone of what the alleged EA viral marketer mentioned in regards to EA's marketing staff: stating that there were about 560 people used to virally market for EA. The viral marketer had mentioned that EA had laid him off and was planning to lay off more personnel whose jobs would eventually go to people overseas -- outsourced to South-East Asia, no less. The 500 - 1000 layoff would make sense if it were from their bloated marketing division, and it wouldn't be lying on EA's part if those jobs were outsourced readily to their South-East Asian division, which, conveniently is hiring.

The quote above, however, dictates that they're looking to hire into specific roles for game development across multiple platforms but if EA says their headcount will be higher by the end of the year, who's to argue against them?

One thing is for sure, they had to squash those rumors quick, otherwise their stock would have taken a hit given that investors would have seen the news as a sign of the company folding in under and may have readily pulled out hefty investments if EA really was in that much trouble. Nice save, EA...nice save.